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Is academic performance the only way of determining success?
2006-03-15 13:00:24
By Raymond Farai
Talking about success confuses a lot of people. Many think that it has to do with attaining good grades academically.
Because of this children are often barked at if they do not bring good grades at the end of the semester.
However, such actions are counterproductive because once you start threatening a child, instead of improving, that fear will actually worsen the situation.
It might end up creating a negative attitude towards school.
As a result the child might try to look for other ways to vent his or her frustration. Some of the ways are misbehaving or indulging in drugs.
If a child does not do well academically, the best way to deal with this is by being supportive.
Passing such comments like, ’I know you can perform better than this with more effort.I will buy you some good books which can use to improve your performance next time,’ can be rewarding.
If you are not happy with your child’s academic performance, you can discuss that with the teachers and get advice on how best to help him/her.
Being hostile and passing dehumanizing comments will only worsen the situation and make the child hate school even more.
Besides success does not necessarily mean excelling in academic subjects.
Parents should learn to identify the talent in their child and encourage it.
Each child has a different talent. The sooner we learn to accept this the better.
In most cases parents yell comments like, ’you are hopeless, if only you could be like Mary, then you would be successful in life.’
Such comments will not help your child in any way.
Your child is not like Mary and will never be like her no matter how loud you bark at her.
Encouraging your child’s talent will help reap positive results.
Some children are gifted in sporting activities like soccer whilst others are gifted in designing, handcraft etc.
They can still be successful in their areas of expertise and interest if they get the necessary support.
Bill Gates, Puff Daddy, many African soccer players and many other billionaires in the world dropped out of college to start their own companies and today they are some of the richest people in the world.
We should not blindly stick to the old school of thought which maintains that for a child to be successful in life, he has to attain high grades academically.
It is because of this belief that we find many people forcing their children to re-sit the national examinations several times even if they continue to score poorly.
The best thing to do under such circumstances would be to identify the child’s talent and work with him or her to develop.
That way the child will still register success in his or her own field.
We cannot all be doctors, teachers, nurses etc, the accepted traditional professions.
Times are changing and we need to change too. Being stubborn and staunch traditionalists will not help us in any way.
I have seen people leave professions after completing four years of training to start another course because they never liked the professions in the first place but were just forced by their parents.
Others do not go to the extent of changing the profession but spend the rest of their lives complaining bitterly because they don’t enjoy their job and they wish they had not listened to their parents.
For how long are we going to continue causing untold pain and suffering to our children because we want them to stick to the traditional professions in a changing world?
Our biggest problem as parents is that we want to realize our dreams through our children.
What we failed to achieve, we want our children to achieve for us.
Is that fair? Our role is to advise and support not to impose things on our children.
They have a life to live and they have to do so freely.
Al we have to do is guide them to ensure that they do not go astray but we should give them room to do what they enjoy doing.
Remember a career is a lifetime thing and we wouldn’t want our children to be grumbling for the rest of their lives because of us.
Tough as it might be, the fact remains we have to accept change and learn to live with it.
Our children need to be given room to make their own choices.
A child can be a failure on the academic arena but that is not the end of the world.
That very same child can be a success if we encourage him or her to make optimum use of his or her talent.
Gone are the days when success used to be determined on academic grounds. This is the 21st century.
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